Etgar Keret, author of “What Do We Have in Our Pockets,” has a short film up his sleeve

The above short, directed by Goran Dukić and based on Etgar Keret’s story of the same name, premieres this week at the Sundance Film Festival. Dukić is also the director of 2006’s Wristcutters: A Love Story, which is based on Keret’s novella Kneller’s Happy Campers.

“What Do We Have in Our Pockets” is included in Keret’s 2012 story collection Suddenly, a Knock at the Door. The film is compliments of storyvid, a new project that attempts to mesh the qualities of a music video with literature.

“In this project, Dov Alfon and I are trying to do something that’s supposed to be the literary version of the music video. Basically we’re trying to get filmmakers to express reading. We believe that it’s a new kind of storytelling that can bring people who are not natural readers closer to literature, and advance the idea that stories are there, waiting to be read, and don’t necessarily have to be threatening.

People relate to literature like it is castor oil for bones, like music and cinema are fun, and literature strengthens your bones. We’re trying to say that it isn’t so,” said Keret.

“Goran Dukic worked my book ‘Kneller’s Happy Campers,’ into a feature with Tom Waits. We approached him about it, and he made a video called ‘What do we have in our pockets,’ and in the meantime, we’re very happy that it has received almost 150,000 views in just a few days, and we are getting lots of tweets expressing support from literary magazines. The movie will also compete at Sundance,” continued Keret.

If you’d like to read “What Do We Have in Our Pockets,” failbetter.com published it last March.